Slate Valley Center for Rehabilitation and Nursing

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection grade. In fact, its inspection grade was far better than its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A+. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to create an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also received a favorable score in our long-term care category. We awarded this facility an above average grade of B in this category. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 97.297295 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life threatening ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The third area we graded was short-term care, where this nursing home received a B- in this category. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return home from this facility. We found that 4.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below average.

The final area we rated is nursing, which ended up being this nursing home's worst category. We gave this facility a grade of D in this category. Naturally, this category pulled down the nursing home's overall profile to a certain degree. In determining a facility's nursing rating, we weigh the amount of time nurses are seeing residents as well as the skill levels of those nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. To go along with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this nursing home also didn't perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in calculating our nursing ratings. We looked at the percentage of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average nursing home. This may be a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these statistics pulled down this nursing home's nursing rating quite a bit.